The Wild West Meets the West End: The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet and Pygmalion

McNamara, Audrey

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-32589-2_5

Audrey McNamara⁴

Part of the book series: Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries ((BSC))

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Abstract

Following the Abbey Theatre’s rejection of John Bull’s Other Island in 1904, it was to be another five years before Shaw’s plays were performed on the Abbey stage, though they did appear on other Irish stages during the interim. In 1907 and 1908, six of his plays, including a performance of John Bull’s Other Island, appeared in the Gaiety Theatre, the Theatre Royal, and the Cork Opera House. In a letter to Lady Gregory in August 1909, Shaw noted that “of the fifteen countries outside Britain in which my plays are performed, my own is by no means the least lucrative …”. In June1909, following the refusal of a licence for his latest play The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, Shaw turned his focus once more to the Abbey stage. Anthony Roche argues, “there is evidence in the play itself that Blanco Posnet was all along intended for the Abbey stage”. While the two plays discussed in this chapter might seem an unlikely coupling—The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet (1909) a one-act melodrama and Pygmalion (1912) a five-act [anti-]romantic comedy—several very strong themes link them together.

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Notes

1.
Bernard Shaw. Collected Letters 1898–1910 (London: Max Reinhardt 1972) p. 864.
2.
Anthony Roche The Irish Dramatic Revival 1899–1939 (London: Bloomsbury, 2015) p. 90.
3.
Grand proposes that the scum-woman is she who provides sexual services for men. See “The New Aspect of the Woman Question” in A New Woman Reader ed. Carolyn Christensen Nelson (Canada: Broadview Press, 2001) pp 141–146.
4.
See Leonard Conolly’s note in New Mermaid 2008 annotated edition of Pygmalion.
5.
Michael Holroyd Bernard Shaw: The Pursuit of Power (London: Chatto & Windus 1998) p. 334.
6.
David Ross, A Critical Companion to William Butler Yeats: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work (USA: Infobase Publishing 2009) p. 28.
7.
Michael Holroyd Bernard Shaw: The Pursuit of Power p. 227.
8.
See Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel’s Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and the Socialist Provocation where he convincingly argues the links between Synge’s Playboy and Shaw’s Blanco pp. 78–85.
9.
Michael Holroyd Bernard Shaw: The Pursuit of Power p. 227.
10.
Michael Holroyd Bernard Shaw: The Pursuit of Power p. 227.
11.
Michael Holroyd Bernard Shaw: The Pursuit of Power p. 227.
12.
A month after Edward Smyth Pigott, the censor, died in 1895, Shaw wrote in the Pall Mall Gazette that the person who succeeded him should be “a Nobody”. It is safe to assume when George Redford assumed the office, Shaw did not gain a friend! See Bernard F. Dukore’s excellent book Bernard Shaw and the Censor: Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen, eds Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel & Peter Gahan (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan 2020) for a detailed evaluation of the Censor’s Office and Shaw’s relationship with it.
13.
Lady Augusta Persse Gregory, Our Irish Theatre; A Chapter in Autobiographies (New York &London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1913) p. 140.
14.
Gregory, Lady Augusta Persse Our Irish Theatre; A Chapter in Autobiographies (New York &London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1913) p. 140.
15.
The disruptions in Dublin were an attempt at censorship, and certain lines were removed for its London premier in June 1907.
16.
Shortly after the banning of The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, Shaw flagrantly flouted the censor with Press Cuttings (1909). He created two characters whose satirical names were instantly recognisable, thereby brazenly violating the code, which prohibited any offensive representations of living people of stage. Shaw argued that Mitchener was not the late Lord Kitchener and that the character of Prime Minister Balsquith (who first appeared cross-dressed on the stage) was neither Lord Alfred Balfour nor the Liberal politician Herbert Henry Asquith. (Sally Peters Shaw’s life: A Feminist in spite of himself) Although this play was explicitly about female suffrage, it was not included for analysis in the book because its form, as a farce, did not compliment the trajectory of the book’s argument.
17.
Lady Augusta Persse Gregory Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter in Autobiographies p. 143.
18.
Christopher Morash, A History of Irish Theatre 1602–2000 (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press 2002) p. 144.
19.
Lady Augusta Persse Gregory, Our Irish Theatre; A Chapter in Autobiographies p. 151.
20.
Lady Augusta Persse Gregory, Our Irish Theatre; A Chapter in Autobiographies p. 168.
21.
G. J. Watson, [Cathleen Ní Houlihan] in Modern Irish Drama ed. John P. Harrington (New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company 1991) 41.
22.
Eileen O’Faolain, Irish Sagas & Folk Tales (Dublin: Poolbeg Press 1986), p. 164.
23.
Eileen O’Faolain, Irish Sagas & Folk Tales p. 165.
24.
Bernard Shaw. Collected Letters 1898–1910 p. 859.
25.
Eileen O’Faolain, Irish Sagas & Folk p. 174.
26.
Spéir Bhean is Gaelic and translates as Sky Woman. A late version (sixteenth–eighteenth century) version of the goddess of sovereignty through whose right a king could rule in Ireland, the spéir bhean was depicted by the bards of the time as a beautiful young woman possibly from the otherworld who wandered the roads searching for the land’s true leader. Her name was sometimes given as Cathleen ni Houlihan, sometimes as Rosin Dubh or Dark Rosaleen. Sometimes she appeared as the Shan Van Vocht (Sean Bhean Bhocht) the “poor old woman” who recalls the hag who turned young again when she was kissed by the rightful ruler.
27.
This serves to reinforce the Irish link as the rainbow described by Blanco had “green writing on a streak of red”, as discussed earlier in the chapter aligning the “rainbow woman” with an Irish connection.
28.
Bernard Shaw _Our Theatre in the Nineties Vol II (London: Constable & Company 1932 revised 1948) p 29.
29.
Bernard Shaw Letter to Lady Gregory August 7 August 1909 Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey ed. Dan H. Laurence & Nicholas Grene (Gerrard’s Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993) p 11.
30.
J.M. Synge, “The Playboy of the Western World” in The Complete Plays Introduction and Notes T.R. Henn (London: Methuen Drama1963) p. 183.
31.
J.M. Synge, “The Playboy of the Western World” in The Complete Plays p. 224.
32.
Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: A Literature of a Modern Nation (Great Britain: Vintage 1996) p. 179.
33.
J.M. Synge, “The Playboy of the Western World” in The Complete Plays p. 229.
34.
Bernard Shaw “Our Irish Players” The Matter with Ireland ed. Dan H. Laurence & David H. Greene (USA: University Press Florida, 2001) p 77.
35.
Anthony Roche, Synge and the Making of Modern Irish Drama (Ireland: Carysfort Press 2013) p. 21.
36.
Bernard Shaw. Sixteen Self Sketches (London: Constable & Company Ltd. 1949) p. 14.
37.
Lady Gregory’s argument against part of the censor’s objection was that it was “hypocrisy to object to a fallen woman in homespun on the stage, when a fallen woman in satin has been the theme of a great number of plays that have been passed” found in her Our Irish Theatre; A Chapter in Autobiographies p. 146.
38.
J.M. Synge, “The Playboy of the Western World” p. 191.
39.
J.M. Synge, “The Playboy of the Western World” p. 204.
40.
J.M. Synge, “The Playboy of the Western World” p. 181.
41.
Sue-Ellen Case. feminism and the theatre p. 6.
42.
See Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel. “SHAW, CONNOLLY, AND THE IRISH CITIZEN ARMY.” Shaw 27 (USA: Penn State Press,2007): 118–34.
43.
Alan Dent. Bernard Shaw and Mrs Patrick Campbell: Their Correspondence (London: Victor Gollamcz 1952) p. 19.
44.
Bernard Shaw Pygmalion ed. L.W. Conolly (London: Methuen Drama 2008) p. xxv.
45.
Awan Amkpa, Drama and the Languages of Postcolonial Desire: Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” Irish University Review, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Autumn—Winter, 1999), p. 294.
46.
Jean Reynolds Pygmalion’s Wordplay: The Postmodern Shaw p. 2.
47.
Elizabeth Cvitan, Art in Evolution: The Association of Burne-Jones, Morris and Rossetti in the second generation of Raphaelitism in Pre-Raphaelites, Aesthetics and Decadents Rhode Island: Brown University 2006) available at http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/cvitan.html accessed January 13th 2021.
48.
Sarah Grand’s The New Aspect of the Woman Question in The North American Review p. 271.
49.
Alan Dent, Bernard Shaw and Mrs Patrick Campbell: Their Correspondence (London; Victor Gollancz 1952) P. 162.
50.
GM Gibbs Bernard Shaw a Life p. 332.
51.
Awan Amkpa, Drama and the Languages of Postcolonial Desire: Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” Irish University Review, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Autumn—Winter, 1999), pp. 294–304 p. 2.
52.
David Clare, Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook (England: Palgrave Macmillan 2016) See chapter 2 “Shaw and the Irish Diaspora” for an excellent Irish reading of Higgin’s character.
53.
Bernard Shaw, “Introduction” The Matter with Ireland eds Dan H. Laurence and David H. Greene (Florida: University Press Florida, 2001) p. xv.
54.
Fredrick P. W. McDowell, The Shavian World of John Bull’s Other Island in Modern Critical Views: George Bernard Shaw ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers 1987) p. 65.
55.
Bernard Shaw, The Matter with Ireland p. 204.
56.
Bernard Shaw, The Matter with Ireland p. 60.
57.
Kimberly Bohman-Kalaja, Undoing Identities in Two Irish Shaw Plays: John Bull’s Other Island and Pygmalion In Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition. Ed Peter Gahan. (USA: Penn State Press 2010) p. 120.
58.
Kimberly Bohman-Kalaja, Undoing Identities in Two Irish Shaw Plays: John Bull’s Other Island and Pygmalion) p. 117.
59.
Brian Friel, “Translations” Plays 1 (London: Faber & Faber 1984) p. 399.
60.
Brian Friel, “Translations” Plays 1 p. 400.
61.
Brian Friel, Plays 1 (London: Faber & Faber 1984) p. 400.
62.
Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: A Literature of a Modern Nation (Great Britain: Vintage 1996) p. 622.
63.
Bernard Shaw, The Matter with Ireland p. 159.

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School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Audrey McNamara

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McNamara, A. (2023). The Wild West Meets the West End: The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet and Pygmalion. In: Bernard Shaw. Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32589-2_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32589-2_5
Published: 20 July 2023
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